17-Year-Old Alana Hadley Wins Indianapolis Monumental Marathon

Hadley runs 2:38:34, breaks Colleen De Reuck's course record.

At age 17, Alana Hadley won the 2014 Indianapolis Monumental Marathon in course record time. Rhiannon Johns/Indianapolis Monumental Marathon

17-year-old high school senior Alana Hadley won the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon Saturday, running 2:38:34 and breaking Olympian Colleen De Reuck’s course record. Hadley improved upon the Olympic Trials qualifying time she ran one year ago at the same race, when she finished fourth in 2:41:56.

“It feels amazing!” wrote Hadley in an email to Runner’s World Newswire. “You always dream of winning a big race and to finally do it was just incredible. And even better was the fact that I was able to do it in challenging weather conditions and by executing my race plan almost exactly.”

Stephanie Telek, 21, stayed close to Hadley through 10K, but Hadley led the women’s race most of the way. She ran a slight negative split in tough conditions, going through the half in 1:19:28 and coming back in 1:19:06, which was part of her strategy.

“I decided negative splitting the race would be my best option, doing what I could into the wind and taking advantage of any section where it was at my back,” wrote Hadley.

The temperature hovered in the low 30s throughout the race, with wind chill readings in the low 20s.

Hadley’s run was the second-fastest by a U.S. high school girl. The fastest is Cathy Schiro’s 2:34:24 in 1984. Schiro went on to make the 1988 and 1992 Olympic marathon teams as Cathy O’Brien.

Though an improvement of more than three minutes in one year might suggest linear progress, it’s been a challenging year at times for Hadley. After last year’s Indianapolis Monumental Marathon, Hadley said she added too many quality elements back into her training at once and developed a stress reaction in the third metatarsal of her right foot. It was the first big injury of her running career, which began when she raced her first 5K at age 6.

The injury caused Hadley to take four weeks off during December 2013 and January 2014. Upon returning to running, she built back up to her regular mileage—which often hovers in the 110 miles-per-week range—and felt ready to run well at Grandma’s Marathon in June.

However, some upper hamstring and hip flexor tightness she had developed in training led her to drop out of the race at 20 miles. The disappointing result made her all the more determined to post some good results in the fall.

But instead, she dropped out of the Rock ’n’ Roll Virginia Beach Half Marathon on a hot and humid day at the end of August. She wrote of the race on her blog at the time, “I got flustered, and began to magnify in my mind every ache and tight muscle and eventually stopped more from personal disappointment of not being in a situation to run a fast time than any real physical issue.”

After the race, she recorded a video diary for Flotrack, in which she said, ““What I’ve started to realize is that I’ve become almost a perfectionist when it comes to races now.”

In the video, an obviously disappointed Hadley describes her tendency to enter races with goal times and a vision of how she would like the race to go. “As soon as that doesn’t happen, I start to mentally check out,” she explained.

Hadley wrote to Newswire that after the setbacks, “I decided I had to regroup, and start approaching things a little more professionally.” She started working with a sports clinic to address her hamstring and hip issues, and worked more flexibility into her race plans and goals.

That flexibility paid off on Saturday. “When I saw the weather wasn’t going to be great in Indianapolis, I knew I had to change my game plan and run a smart race for those conditions,” wrote Hadley.

Her path over the last year made Saturday’s win even sweeter. “It feels so great to overcome the adversity of the past year and to have put myself in a great place for moving forward from here,” wrote Hadley.

Hadley has her sights on the 2016 Olympic Trials and—if things go well—representing the U.S. internationally.

“By focusing on getting my times down and running faster and faster I think I am on the right path to become more competitive in national championships, Olympic Trials and put myself in the hunt for World Championship teams," she wrote. "How competitive I am and how quickly will depend a lot on how the next year goes, but I hope to be as competitive as possible for the 2016 Trials.”

Hadley, who turned pro in March 2013, does not run for her high school team. She is coached by her father, Mark, who will continue to coach her from a distance when she goes to college next year. She has narrowed her college choices to three schools, all located in her home state of North Carolina.

One of the reasons Hadley opted to run this year’s Indianapolis Monumental Marathon was that it gave her the opportunity to do a “t-shirt fundraiser” for an Indiana charity. She chose the Autism Society of Indiana, because her 10-year-old sister, Rose, is autistic, as is one of her cousins.

Hadley upped the ante by donating $250 of her $1,000 course record bonus to the organization, which the race organizers will match. She estimates that she raised several thousand dollars for the organization.

“[Autism] is something I see daily and a cause I am really passionate about,” wrote Hadley. “I feel blessed to be in a position to use the talents I have been blessed with to help those with autism.”

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